COUNCIL ON ACADEMIC ASSESSMENT (CAA)
AGENDA – NOVEMBER 3, 2004
LC-31J; 3:00 – 4:00 PM
Present: Malcolm Sherman, Sue Faerman, Deborah Bernhard, David Dai, Maria Brown, Richard
Collier, Joel Berkowitz, Kristina Bendikas, Lisa Dulgar-Tulloch, Lee Franklin
Meeting was called to order at 3:05pm by Malcolm Sherman.
Sherman indicated that he has asked Bill Lanford to chair a sub-committee on institutional assessment
issues, areas such as assessing Z courses, grade distributions, Senator review of administrator
accessibility, or refer them to other councils. Szelest and Collier were asked to and agreed to serve on
this sub-committee. Faerman noted that the issue of Z course are under the purview of the Gen Ed
subcommittee of UAC. Szelest raised the issue of whether these institution-wide issues are under the
purview of this Council, Sherman indicated that he thought it was and that we would work these issues
out as we move forward.
Faerman asked for clarification on the specific tasks that the program review committees will undertake.
Sherman: Right now there is no precedent for whether we endorse, receive, or recommend, nor any
specifics on whether we focus on what is contained in the self-studies, whether or not they conform to
guidelines, or draft rules for future assessments to ensure implementation.
Faerman: Our primary purpose should be to institute feedback into the program review process. What
is our role in making sure that feedback gets implemented?
Sherman: What are the operational implications? When should the CAA review documents?
Faerman noted the NASPAA model of having a group of reviewers comment on the self-study and
sending the comments, and departmental response, to a different group of external reviewers. If we
followed such a model, the CAA would raise issues or questions that the department would need to
respond to. The site reviewer team sees all the CAA comments and the departmental response. This
means taking a stance on the quality of self-studies.
Collier: Stated that he believes our charge is to recommend whether or not the University Senate
accepts the departmental self-study. And to raise issues that UAC or GAC should take up. Senate
charter language is intentionally vague.
Szelest: Part of our review of self-studies should be to ensure that the program review guidelines
(“Provisional Procedures for the Joint Review of Established Graduate and Undergraduate Programs”
distributed at our first meeting) are adhered to, particularly those that pertain to the assessment plan.
Sherman: In general, we should stay away from resource issues.
Discussion ensued, and it was agreed that the CAA would review self-studies after a final or near final
draft is completed and before it is sent off campus, if possible. This would encourage a quality product
and also provide reviewers with another perspective, as well as the departmental response to that
perspective.
Sherman, Szelest, and Faerman agreed to draft more specific guidelines for CAA review of program
self-studies.
By general consensus it was agreed that future self-studies would be asked to include an appendix that
detailed who exactly (faculty, staff, and/or students) participated in the self-study and what they did.
[Szelest retrospective note: this would entail modifying the “Provisional Procedures for the Joint
Review of Established Graduate and Undergraduate Programs”, something we might take up at a future
meeting]
It was noted that Middle States and SUNY guidelines also called for this.
Council members were asked to sign up for one of two program review sub-committees, one geared to
reviewing quantitative disciplines, and one geared toward reviewing qualitative disciplines. It was noted
that this approach to reviewing program self-studies might need adjustment down the road as the
program review schedule in any given year is not necessarily equally divided between quantitative and
qualitative disciplines but that we would use this approach to get going.
The Theatre program self-study document is to be distributed to the qualitative sub-committee as soon
as possible as that review is to take place November 15 and 16.
Respectfully submitted,
Bruce Szelest
